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Modes of Musical Melancholy- Is everybody Happy?





Etching: Albrecht Dürer: Melancholia 1514

Mates,

As a chronic depressive since 1958 I realised that I long ago naturally gravitated to melancholic music. I use “melancholic” in place of “sad”, “pessimistic”, or “depressing” as melancholy is a creative mode. Melancholy is the Western version of contemplation- instead of inspired thought of the Eastern thought, our’s is inspired thought plus anxiety- and especially contemplative of identity- self-image and those constructs are in turn plastered over with the seemingly endless tragedies of the World.

Voltaire said that all man’s troubles start when they go outside the house, but Voltaire was never a melancholic or he should have known that there are many people consider all their troubles are boiling without having to even leave their own heads.

The usual outlets for melancholy are in order of magnitude: becoming a Saint, psychiatrist, Alchemist, poet, composer, painter, literary critic, and of course- copier toner salesman.

The role of melancholy in music is I think an obvious one- it attempts to inspire in the listener the same balance of the emotional and intellectual contemplations. Probably, it’s more useful to give examples. I see five types of Melancholic composers: 1. There are the Epic/Heroic melancholics- feeling the weight of the world, the injustice, and their own struggle with thanatopsis - an attempt to understand Death. Their work often has a lot of structure- it’s architectural music: Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Mahler. 2. The Mysterious Melancholic- in which the personality considers Creation and annihilation, identity, soul, and/or God as mysteries that may be solved only by striving towards a hidden inner understanding and knowledge: Froberger, Satie. 3. The Yearning Melancholic: “I think I know what’s wrong and what I need”: John Dowland, Schubert, Chopin, Simon and Garfunkel. 4. The Spiritual Melancholic: Tallis, Liszt, Franck, Webern, Messien, Ligeti . 5. the Mechanistic Melancholic: Scarlatti, Mozart, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, John Adams - in which the melancholy is sublimated to a kind of detailed angularity and/or patterns/repetitions, this a substitute for the “Ouuhhmmmmmm” of meditation.

In these times troubled by so many going out of their house to face the onslaught of war, corporate control of media and politicians, economic disaster, aggressive advertising, I find I consistently am listening from the Melancholic catalogue. I do a bit of writing at night and a few weeks ago I played the complete piano works of Erik Satie (Ciccolini) . This is only 2-CD’s- four times in succession. There was a Froberger (Egarr) festival. A comparison of various versions of “Das Lied von den Erde”. I did the same with the complete organ works of Cesar Franck, and today I’m playing the complete Organ works of Bach (Fagius) 17 (Brilliant Classics) CD’s and believe I will hear them all during this week.

In the past, I've gone through periods where I concentrated on melancholic music of one kind or another for quite a long while: about three years with almost nothing but string quartets- particularly late Beethoven, and there have been long spurts of Chopin- I was raised on Artur Rubinstein’s Nocturnes- the first time I understood that performance and interpretation varied in quality and impact. When I bought an impossibly budget set of 11-CD’s of Rubinstein playing Chopin, I wallowed in that odd happy sadness for several days in a row. Years ago, I split my Rubinstein loyalty with Ivan Moravec. I was surprised too by how much I like Pollini too. Glenn Gould was the second revelation of distinctive musical style and invention- a truly eccentric and self-absorbed melancholic that made Bach afresh in his own image- Genius! -I’ve played many Glenn Gould recordings many times.

As a birthday gift to myself, I bought the complete works of John Dowland (Rooley & Co.) on 12 LOL- L.O. Lyre and especially enjoyed the solo lute and wonderful lute songs. The reason I like Dowland is that the Renaissance/ Early Baroque was melancholic- contemplative, but at the same time optimistic- there was a resurgence of Classical thought in art and science- and everything looked possible and looked forward. And there is then this great sensation of thoughtful optimism- we can use ideas to solve problems of any scale- individual to the whole World.

So- any else here solving the Big Questions note by note?


Cheers,

Bambi B


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Topic - Modes of Musical Melancholy- Is everybody Happy? - Bambi B 10:43:07 03/2/10 (28)

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